I Rose
by BRiGHTSiDE17
Summary: In unexpected fashion, one soul and his two friends fell into the darkness of amnesia. Now, they had to pick themselves up and fight for the answers they so desperately wanted and needed. But what connected these three, anyway? Rated T, just to be safe.
1. Prologue: The Awakening

_Author's Note: Hello, everyone! Last year, the original idea for this fanfiction came about in my somewhat crazed noggin, and this story is now finally going to start seeing the light of day. I intend on this being the beginning of a series, but part of that depends on how much I want to go on with that AND, more importantly, how much you guys like this fanfiction. Please show support and review; it means a LOT to me._

 _This has been a fun story to write, and I hope more than anything else that this will be a fun story to read. :)_

I ROSE

PROLOGUE: THE AWAKENING

A fog came over me, one that was like a dream but not quite. It was a blur of memories, covering my brain like a blanket thrown on a drowsy child. It was just like one, too: nontransparent and fuzzy. I couldn't see past it. I saw that the memories were there, but I couldn't keep track of a single one of them. Was it really all a dream? Maybe, it was some untapped piece of my imagination that sent a whirl of imagery my way. It felt so strange. Was it real? It felt real, like those things had happened before. But if I could just remember part of the dream…that sunset. That sunset…

Suddenly, the blanket of vague images was pulled off of me as I gained back my consciousness. I slowly opened my eyes, unsure of what I was going to see. Something seemed different. I couldn't put my finger on it, but something didn't seem normal. And what a shock I had when my eyesight came clear: I was in the middle of a grassland with hills and palm trees strewn about. I had never in my life seen a place as bright as this one. The greens of the palm tree leaves and the grass were like a vivid shock to my system, waking me up that much quicker. Everywhere was green except for the sun up above and the bright sky that was more cerulean than any cerulean that ever was, natural or artificial.

Once my surprise about the landscape calmed down, I noticed very quickly the pain in my body. My entire being seemed to pulse with a dull agony. My head, especially, felt like it had been knocked against a boulder. I had to rest for a few minutes until the headache wore off somewhat. What got me to feeling this pain? Did my body actually get knocked into a boulder? Well, there was nothing like that around the area. Did someone beat me up? There wasn't a single clue that anyone had been around there, not even that I had been there. Did I fall? That seemed like the only solid explanation I had. With what I was feeling, no other explanation made sense. I had to have fallen from a good height. But where would I have fallen from, and how did I even end up in a grassland in the first place?

It was right in the middle of asking that question that I noticed something else: ME. My hands were fitted with white gloves, and red sneakers were on my feet. I never remembered wearing those things. My body was colored with yellow fur with a patch of white fur on my chest. Quickly, I felt around on my head and found that I had a pair of wide, pointed ears. Was this me? This didn't feel right, like I had been changed. Was I still in a dream?

There was only one way to find out; a pond was just beside me to my left. I thought that maybe, its water would give me enough of a jolt to help wake me up from this odd place. I weakly rolled onto my hands and knees and started splashing the crisp, cool water on my face. It was refreshing as much as it was a chilly wake-up call. My eyes were closed in hopeful anticipation, thinking that when I opened them that this place would just be a piece of my imagination, that I would wake up to a place I knew and to a me that felt like me. However, my eyes opened up, and nothing had changed. Then, I saw the reflection staring wide eyed back at me from the pond: a blue-eyed fox with a pair of tails lying behind him in the grass.

Things weren't adding up. I don't remember looking like this. I don't remember this landscape. I don't remember any of this at all. And that's when it hit me. I DON'T REMEMBER ANYTHING. Nothing was coming to mind from my past: no family, no hometown, no friends, none of my hobbies. Nothing. Well, almost nothing. The only solid memory I had was of a sunset. I didn't even know if it was part of my past or if it was a dream; it just was.

So there I was, a two-tailed fox with barely a memory to hold, a soul who apparently fell from some unknown place in the sky. I didn't know who I was or where I came from. Some people would have been scared out of their minds with the questions and problems that I had flowing through my head. As for me, I was panic-stricken and unsure of a lot, my neck and chest feeling choked up from the fear. But as my heart gradually calmed down, things didn't seem so terrible. Except for the temporary ache I was feeling from my fall, I wasn't hurt. Questions abounded, but all was not really THAT bad. I was still alive. Breath still was flowing into my lungs, and as long I had that, I had a reason to live and try to figure out what had happened. So I got up on my feet.

From the place I had fallen, I rose.


	2. Chapter 1: The Encounter

CHAPTER 1: THE ENCOUNTER

Pushing myself off the ground, I began to walk, searching for anything worthwhile. I needed a place to begin: a path that I could go on, a group of people who maybe saw me end up here, an image that would trigger a memory. If none of those things came, a home to stay in for the night would be fine. Maybe then, I would be able to rest and start figuring through what had happened to me. That didn't seem likely, though. There was not a house in sight. Each step I was taking brought more and more questions, but I simply had to throw them off. The burden of them on my back would have been impossible to carry. I needed to keep walking, to keep searching. What's shocking is that it didn't take me many hours to find something that was not a palm tree, a pond, a cloud, or a blade of grass. It just wasn't what I expected.

The only thing that I could do was stare. I had walked up to the top of a decent-sized hill when I found him. A long-haired, bright red echidna was lying motionless on a flat piece of grassland, several yards away from my location. I began to have a strange feeling as I thought through what I was seeing. As far as my eyesight could go, there was not a person or a dwelling anywhere close to him. He was just alone in the middle of a small plain there, out cold. Also, it didn't seem like he was asleep; it looked as if he had been knocked unconscious by something. SORT OF LIKE HOW I ENDED UP. Was he in the same scenario that I was in? Before I thought too hard on that question, I had to bring my attention back to the echidna's condition. Over all other concerns I could've had, the echidna looked hurt, and I had to make sure that he was okay.

My feet dashed over to where he was as quick as they could. I didn't just run, though. I ran FAST. It didn't feel like I was sprinting; it felt more like the world was passing me by, almost as if the sky, the grass, and the trees were the ones in a hurry. The adrenaline rush I had was a needed sanctuary, a short escape. Before I even knew it, I was only a handful of yards away from the echidna. (Maybe, being in this body wasn't so scary after all.) Not wanting to startle him at first, I walked cautiously towards the echidna. My eyes searched over him for any bruising or bleeding in the hopes that he wasn't badly hurt. I stopped instantly, though, just before I was about to stand above him because in looking over him, I found something that gave me chills: there were two giant spikes sticking directly out of both of his gloved fists. They were connected to him, pieces of who he was. In the moment, I was just hoping that he was not the kind of person that would punch at someone before he would think. Man, was I wrong.

Before I could wake him up, he started to move. I backed away a few feet so that he would have some more breathing room. He looked up, his purple irises staring at the same sky that I had seen moments ago for the very first time. Whispering to himself confusedly, he rolled onto his knees, soreness making his movement tough to pull off.

He then looked down at his hands, and a strong panic overwhelmed him. He kept staring at his lengthy echidna body and his spiked fists, almost as if he didn't remember being in that vessel.

"What happened to me?" he asked himself in angst. Every moment felt like another load of firewood being thrown onto a blaze of anxiety. He looked around, trying to find any sort of hint or sign of what had happened. Then his eyes caught squarely onto mine. He first looked as if he were frozen in shock. I don't think he expected to find a soul anywhere near him. His surprise then quickly burned away into a fierce look of anger.

"What happened?!" he snarled. "Did you have something to do with this?!" Though he was in pain, he was starting to get up onto his feet, still looking at me with a growing fire in his eyes. I didn't know who to feel more nervous for: me or him. I knew that at any moment, he could beat me up, but he looked to be spiraling into a complete mental crisis. I felt bad for him.

"No. I don't remember anything, either," I said, trying to show my concern. But I realized quickly that it wouldn't matter what my answer was. From the look on his face, he was going to try to beat answers out of me, even if I had none.

I backed up as quickly as I could, knowing well that he was charging up for a punch. Then without a warning, a red blur started rushing forward. The echidna had been holding back a flurry of pointed blows, and they were all now being aimed at me. The only thing that I could think of doing in the moment was to guard my face and to try to make a jump over him. I don't know why; it was just an instinctive reaction. All in a single instant, almost like it was in slow motion, I tried to jump at the same time a fist was flying right towards me. My feet barely made it off the ground right about when the punch was near to making contact…

But the punch didn't hit me. In nervous curiosity, I pulled my arms away from my face to see what was going on.

I WASN'T ON THE GROUND. My body was hovering in mid-air a few feet over the place where I had just been a moment ago. It made absolutely no sense to me…until I looked up. My twin tails, seemingly defying physics, were acting like a helicopter, spinning themselves to gain lift. I didn't even think of flying whenever I did so; it was just natural. Needless to say, I was pretty dumbfounded. Not quite as dumbfounded as the echidna, though. I turned around to where he was, and he had the most confused look on his face. He had no clue how I evaded him, which honestly, neither did I. Just to test out my newfound ability, I decided to fly a tad bit further from him.

"Come down here so I can beat some answers out of you!" he yelled out. (Called it.)

"I don't know anything about what happened to you. Please trust me. I had just found you over there a few minutes ago."

His adrenaline was on full burn. Even with what I was trying to tell him, he still wanted to fight me. Was he not listening to what I was saying? Before all-out war was about to occur, though, a voice cut through from the ground below, off to the right.

"Cool down, hothead! Did you hear what he just told you? You won't be punching any answers out of him because he has none. He's not even trying to hurt you!"

The voice had come from an electric blue, spiky-quilled hedgehog. He was staring right at the raging echidna just a few feet away from him. It looked like he had walked from behind a nearby palm tree to confront the sharp-fisted fireball. There was an energy exuding from him, like it was coming out of his very heart and soul. Attitude radiated from what he said; with speaking only a few sentences, I could tell that he had a personality. That characteristic in particular probably helped him to try and face the echidna. I was just glad that somebody was trying to calm him down. I didn't enjoy the prospect of fighting somebody who was as confused and out-of-place as he was. I didn't really like to fight, period, but it especially didn't feel right to fight him.

After a minute of the hedgehog and the echidna staring down each other, the echidna finally took some deep breaths and started to cool down, even though he was still visibly frustrated. At that point, I decided that it would be safe enough to try to land. I zoomed over towards the hedgehog and came down softly on the ground beside him.

"Flying came in handy, huh?" he said quietly with a slight smile on his face.

"I guess so," I replied, reflecting his grin back. "I didn't even know I could fly."

"Well, good that you figured that out in time. You would have been destroyed if you had waited a second longer."

As the situation became a little more chill, a question started rising from within me. Even if I wanted to hold it back, I couldn't. With what happened to both me and the echidna, I couldn't ignore the possibility that somebody else maybe had the same thing happen to him, too.

"Sorry to ask, but just out of curiosity, why were you over here, anyway?"

The hedgehog stared down for a second, his green eyes and his face set in a pondering look.

"Well," he began with a tinge of unsureness in his voice, "I woke up on the side of a hill over there, kind of like how Mr. Fireball did a minute ago." (The echidna gave him a tough glare.) "For some reason, I couldn't remember how I got there. Me being a hedgehog even threw me off a little bit. Crazy, right? My head's starting to clear up now since I came over here…but I'm still confused. Why are you here? Were you trying to find that echidna there?"

The hairs on my neck stood on end at the question and what it meant.

"Umm…actually…I'm here for the same reason you're here. I lost my memory, too."

"Really?!"

To make sure of where we all stood, I stepped towards the echidna since he looked then like he wasn't going to beat me into a pulp.

"And you don't remember anything about yourself or what had happened to you, either…right?"

"Of course not!" he told me.

All three of us in that moment stared at each other in bewilderment. In our heads, we were starting to realize things; we were beginning to connect dots. Almost like telepathy, we knew what each other was thinking without saying a word: none of this seemed at all like coincidence. The hedgehog then finally was the first of us to speak.

"So…NONE of us remember our pasts? And NONE of us remember being in this place or looking like we do?"

Both the echidna and I slowly nodded our heads.

"How does something like that happen?" asked the hedgehog.

"I don't know," the echidna responded, now a little more calmly, "but there's gotta be someone around here who knows something about us or what happened."

"Yeah, probably. But where should we start? I don't think there's anyone around this place."

Both of them were right. There was probably someone around who could help us out, but we needed a place to begin. As far as we could see, there was not a single house around the area nor could we see a road nearby. Well, as far as we could see from the ground. That got me thinking…

While the hedgehog and the echidna were pondering over our dilemma, I lifted off into the sky to see if there was a path close to us. Luckily, there was a dirt road several yards from where we were standing.

"Hey!" I called out. "There's a path nearby. What do you think? I could fly over towards it so you guys would know where to go."

"Fine by me," the hedgehog answered back.

"Sounds better than just standing here," said the echidna, seeming content to finally take some action.

I flew quickly over to where the path was located and waved my right arm around to signal for them to come. In what seemed like a second, the hedgehog dashed right to where I was like it was effortless. I'm not sure if I had ever seen a person or an animal move as fast as that hedgehog did. Shortly after he arrived, the echidna came in close behind.

As I was landing, I heard the hedgehog say from below, "Wait! Before we head out, we need to give each other names. I don't want to have to call you Fox and Mr. Fireball all the time."

"Okay," replied the echidna, "just anything but that stupid nickname."

"Knuckles!" the hedgehog and I exclaimed simultaneously, pointing our fingers towards the annoyed soul. We both laughed so hard for thinking of the same name like that. What else could we have called him?

"Okay." The newly named Knuckles then looked over towards me. "And what should we call YOU? Tails?"

"You know what?" I said warmly. "That doesn't have a bad ring to it. I like it."

The real problem was what we were going to name the hedgehog. We so far had named each other off of our attributes, and Knuckles and I both knew that the hedgehog was fast. But what would be a good name for him that related to his speed? Fortunately, we didn't have to come up with one; he came up with his own.

"And you guys can call me Sonic!" he announced with crossed arms and a smug look on his face. I had no clue where he came up with that, but it made sense and sounded cool. Thus, we went with it.

So before the three of us began on that long path towards who knew where, Knuckles spoke in a hushed voice, "I hope we find someone soon who can explain all of this mess."

"Well, we're not going to by just talking about it here, right?" responded Sonic. "Let's head off!"

Though nervous about what he had almost done to me earlier, I reassured my new acquaintance. "In time, Knuckles. We'll figure things out."

To be truthful, I was reassuring myself and Sonic as much as I was reassuring Knuckles. We were all confused, and our pasts had somehow run away from all of us. We had a start, though. At least, we had a beginning. Now we just needed to run and catch back the memories that had fled from us so quickly.


	3. Chapter 2: The Search

CHAPTER 2: THE SEARCH

When we started to look for anyone (or anything) that could shed some light on our questions, we were not particularly bubbling with optimism, but we weren't as somber as could be, either. Our group as a whole took up some odd place in the middle of those two emotions.

Sonic had a smile on his face, as content as could be. He kept cracking jokes and kidding around with us almost like nothing had happened to him or his memory whatsoever. He made it feel like we had all known each other for years. His humor helped pass the time, but I wasn't sure if he was actually searching. I mean, he DID have his eyes open; he just seemed more concentrated on having fun than anything else. I didn't particularly blame him, though. We had been placed in a pretty serious scenario, and our initial interactions with each other were a bit shaky. It was a welcome relief to just back away from all the seriousness with some humorous talk.

Knuckles, however, didn't seem to be appreciating Sonic's attitude nearly as much as I was. He wasn't as mean-looking as he was earlier. He just tried to play it cool, looking stone-faced most of the time, with his only focus being on searching. He only made a small chuckle when Sonic did something funny, but his demeanor would soon enough become determined and serious again.

Things got a bit out of hand, though, when Sonic tried to directly pull a prank on Knuckles.

We were all side by side. Sonic was in the center, with me to his left and Knuckles to his right. We were walking along, scanning the wilderness and brush around the path as we had been for a solid block of time. Then, unexpectedly, Sonic quickly ran in a circle around Knuckles. The red echidna stopped dead in his own tracks as a circle of blue surrounded him.

"Come on! What's this about?" Knuckles said impatiently. Sonic didn't even flinch; he just kept going. In a matter of a minute, Sonic had worn through so much dirt in the ground that he had created a trench, encircling the small piece of earth that Knuckles was standing on. It was so deep that it could have held six Knuckles standing on top of each other. Once his work was done, Sonic ran right up out of the trench and laughed, nearly crying on the ground at his own prank. His victim, though, was not going to give him any extra ammo to fuel his laughter. He seemed oddly composed and quiet, given the circumstances. Turns out that he was hiding some tricks under his own sleeves.

I only had glanced off towards the ground for a few moments when I heard the sound of shifting dirt. I looked up to find that Knuckles was nowhere in sight. Automatically, Sonic and I walked over towards the trench to see if our friend had fallen in. Though he was a jokester, Sonic didn't want either of us hurt too badly. He had gotten over to the hole first, but as soon as he was there, his body was suddenly dragged in. Quickly, I ran over to the trench and looked in, but now making sure that I didn't get too close. Knuckles, insanely enough, was just under the edge of the hole, the spikes on his fists dug into the dirt wall. He was holding Sonic by his left ankle so that the trickster's head was pointed towards the bottom of the trench.

"You better not prank me again, or I'll drop you on your head," Knuckles sternly threatened.

"Chill down," said the hedgehog, more relaxed than I expected. "I was just having fun. I won't pull anything like that on you again if you hate stuff like that."

"You better be serious." The echidna's hand started to shake Sonic's ankle up and down.

"Wow. Is it really that hard to trust me?"

"Why should I?" Knuckles now had Sonic's leg held high, prepared to throw the poor hedgehog straight into the bottom of the hole. Though Sonic was in danger, his attitude was still unchanged.

"I promise to not pull a prank on you again. Trust me there. You sure have to ruin the fun, though, don't you?"

Knuckles simply threw him back up over the trench with a heave, making the blue speedster land only inches from me.

"We should be looking for answers, not joking around, okay?" the echidna asserted as he climbed out.

Sonic just rolled his eyes in annoyance. "Ugh, fine."

A little while after that, I found that an enemy had crept in on our team: monotony. We kept walking by palm trees and grass, occasionally finding water to drink and some mangoes to eat. Nothing looked out of place or unusual; our surroundings felt like the same environment on repeat. Thus, it was hard for the team to focus when we kept seeing the same things, even if we had not walked for a very long time. Also, after Knuckles' threat earlier, Sonic did not kid around as much, which noticeably made him more tired and bored. The lack of fun and freedom sucked away his energy like a leech. Knuckles was still wary of his environment, but he didn't seem very happy, either (which got me to question whether he had been happy at any one point since he woke up). I was doing okay, though. I was just glad that we were going somewhere. I didn't talk much while we were walking, so I had no clue if they had noticed. But regardless of how Knuckles or I was feeling, the monotony eventually wore out on Sonic too much.

"You know what? All this walking and searching is about to make me go to sleep. So…why don't we RUN and search?" Sonic had his legs all charged up, ready to boost off into the distance.

"How are you going to find any people like that?" replied Knuckles. "With how fast you go, you wouldn't even be able to see a person; you would only see blurs."

"Ahh, come on!" he said annoyed but somewhat playfully. "I'm just about to sleep-walk if we don't get some adrenaline pumping here!"

"Now what makes YOU think that running around like that would do us any good?"

"Well, what other plans do you have?"

"The one that we have been keeping with. That's the only one we'll need for right now. We need to keep focused and try to figure out what happened to us! That's what we're here for."

"It wouldn't hurt if we ran for a bit and looked for someone, so why can't we, fireball?"

"If you call me that again…"

From what I could hear, both Sonic and Knuckles stopped their arguing once they noticed I was sitting down a few yards behind them. The dirt road had led us up a tall but gently sloping hill, with several more palm trees than normal covering the immediate area. Once we were atop the hill, I could see that from a short distance away, a bright river was running through the area, its water reflecting the golden sunlight. From a much greater distance back was a small mountain range, standing tall and new amidst the miles of hills and trees. When I saw all this, I just wanted to sit down and take it all in. I couldn't keep moving. The view from up there was beautiful, and at the time, I hated the thought that we could've passed this by just because of how dull everything else was.

Soon, Sonic and Knuckles, the latter of whom having backed from his frustration, came to sit beside me.

"Amazing, isn't it?" I said with my normal wide-eyed expression.

"You're right, Tails. Not a bad view at all." Sonic responded. "What do you think, Knuckles?" He lightly jabbed the echidna right on the shoulder, to which he shrugged the punch off.

"I guess it's pretty cool. At least, we're not doing anything dumb." Knuckles attempted to look directly at Sonic, but the hedgehog wasn't paying attention. He was looking at the sunset that we hadn't noticed. The light was now starting to fade fast below the horizon, with not much time left before nightfall.

Sonic spoke up: "You know what, guys? Let's settle around here for the night. It's no use trying to search for stuff that we probably won't see once the sun goes down. Besides, it's been a long day, right?" To this, Knuckles simply nodded his head to say "yes."

Funny enough, I didn't realize how tired my body was until he made the suggestion. We all first woke up into this new world and into these new vessels with pain in our bones. Add onto that the facts that we barely remembered anything from our pasts and that we had walked for some time. Being through that much just wears out the body, and there's simply a point where the journey needs to stop for a time.

A short distance away from the road, there were a few palm trees that we could lay our heads on. We walked slowly and gently over there, longing for some rest. Even Knuckles looked tired once we gave up the search for the day, though I could see in his eyes a longing to continue further.

We each laid our heads on the trunk of a palm tree, ready to call it a night.

"Sweet dreams, bros," Sonic spoke quietly.

"You, too," I yawned. And soon after that, my mind and soul found solace in sleep.

Occasionally, the memory of that sunset came up in my dreams. The very image of it in my head bugged me. For some reason, it kept haunting my thoughts every now and again, staying in my line of focus. Why was the sunset the only thing I could remember from my past? And why did it keep coming to mind? I didn't have time to think about that once I got up the next day. More immediate problems came towards my friends and I quite literally.

In a rush of shock, we all woke up to the ground pulsing under us. At first, it was just small tremors, but then they grew and grew until they shook the world around. The palm trees shivered with every quake of the ground. We all had no clue what was going on until Knuckles took a glance off towards the dirt path.

"Look!" he yelled.

And there, making its way towards the road, was the cause of the earthquakes: a giant mech. Compared to us, the bot was massive standing on its two feet. Its dull dark-grey appearance was a shadowy slit on the face of the grassland. Attached to its shoulders were what looked to be rocket launchers, and a machine gun was mounted on the left and right sides of its domelike head.

We didn't know at the time why it was there, but we did know that whoever was inside that mech was not going to be the most friendly soul. Man, were we right.


	4. Chapter 3: The Egghead

CHAPTER 3: THE EGGHEAD

Confusion overwhelmed us as we were wondering why a mech of all things was around here. Hiding ourselves from it behind the palm trees, we stared at the colossal machine as it forcefully walked on the dirt path.

"Do you think that it's after us or something?" Sonic asked.

"I don't know why it would," Knuckles answered concernedly, "but then again, we don't remember what happened to us before we got here. For all we know about, this piece of metal COULD be looking for us."

"What kind of crime would we had to have committed in order for us to be tracked by a death machine?"

"If there's one thing I'd be a little unsure of finding out, it would be that."

It felt like all of us were nervous for our lives then. As far as we knew, we had done nothing wrong, but now, there was a chance that this mech was going to find and capture us, or even worse, was going to kill us. What reason did it even have for coming after us? And what chance did we really have of knowing that before it would finish its mission?

For a few moments, our hearts seemed to stop as the bot stomped along right in front of us, seemingly unaware of our presence. The world shook at the same time that we were still.

Then all of a sudden, the mech halted its march. A wavelike quiet swept over the area, swept over us.

"Why did it stop?" Knuckles pondered. After a few moments, we looked over towards the front of it, and each of us let out a quiet gasp. Standing in front of the machine was a soul frozen cold in fear by the bot's appearance. It was a small brown hedgehog, anthropomorphic like us. It apparently had come from where we were about to head towards if we had kept walking the night before. Not a muscle in his body nor a quill on his skin was moving before the metallic monster. Sonic, Knuckles, and I looked back and forth at the mech, then at the hedgehog, curious about what was going to happen next.

After what seemed like only a minute, a loud shout came from the person controlling the mech.

"Out of my way!"

In one smooth attack, the bot swooped in with one of its metal hands to get rid of the hedgehog. The blow sent the unlucky soul flying through the air, off into the distance to eventually land with a hard fall.

"Stupid locals!" the mech man complained. "I hate it when they get in my way!"

We all looked towards each other, wondering what to do then. If he saw us, there would be no warm greeting or joking around with him. However, it didn't sound like he was specifically looking for us.

Sonic whispered first: "We should leave the path. That way, there's no chance of meeting back up with this madman."

"But if we run away from the path," countered Knuckles, "then it will probably be harder for us to find any answers."

Knuckles was right. We didn't know our way around this place. If we went away from the dirt road, we would've easily ended up lost, which would not have helped us in finding out why we were in this world in the first place. We had teamed up and journeyed together so we could figure out what happened to us, and leaving that path would make our job much tougher. BUT if we stayed, there was a chance that we would be found, which would possibly lead to something terrible.

Though the risks were enormous, some part of me wanted to stay around the path, and apparently, Sonic had the same thought as well.

"Okay, Knuckles. Let's hide out here."

I nodded to them both in agreement. We continued to kneel behind the palm trees, hoping that we would not be spotted. The bot was still standing where it had been after its attack. For the time being, the man in the mech was checking on some equipment as he mumbled and spouted out random numbers and technical jargon. Then, he instantly ceased his talking altogether, as if something had caught his attention.

"Hmm?" he said curiously. "Well, it looks like I have some more company! My radar detects that there are three people behind those trees over there. Come out, you sneaks!"

In nervousness, I glanced over at Sonic and Knuckles; they both were also set on edge. We knew the entire time we were hiding that something like this could happen. Still, the moment felt surreal.

"Did you hear what I said?! COME OUT NOW OR ELSE!" We heard the machine warm up its guns, ready to fire if we did not concede to the villain's orders.

We all three got up and were about to face this maniac, adrenaline flooding through every one of our veins. Before we stepped out, I took one last look at my two friends. I knew what they were feeling without them saying a word. Sonic had a strong aura of confidence that surrounded him; he was more than ready to take on what was ahead. Knuckles had a hard and serious look, not unlike what he normally showed, but this time, I could see fire welling up in him. An unusual energy ran within me, too, a determination to stand up to this cruel villain. Our adventure wasn't going to end because of this crazed man. Going out there, I knew for sure one thing: we were not going to go down without a battle.

"So, you've been spying on me, eh?" the man said accusingly as we walked out just in front of the trees we had hidden behind. We now had a good look at the mech's controller through a glass window in front of the bot's head. He was a rotund man, but sticklike legs were his supports. (It's kind of hilarious; we called this guy an egghead, but his body actually did look like a walking egg.) He had a sinister face with an extremely pointed nose and a long, edgy ginger mustache. He donned a red jacket —complete with white stripes— and jet black pants. He wasn't that intimidating of a man, but he also seemed like the kind of person that wanted to watch us cower in fear under him and his mech. Well, if that was the case, we did not give him that opportunity whatsoever.

"You're calling us spies?" Sonic replied in a relaxed but lively tone. "You're the one who was spying on us with a radar! We were just minding our own business here before you came stomping up this hill, Eggman!" (He must have caught how funny his appearance was, too.)

Eggman looked furious, his face turning as red as his jacket.

"How dare someone as inferior as you call me such a name! I am Dr. Robotnik, ingenious inventor, mechanical prodigy, leader of…"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," interrupted the blue hedgehog. "We get it. You're cool and stuff. You're on your high skillet."

It felt like steam was going to come out of the doctor's ears at any moment.

"ENOUGH OF THIS NONSENSE! I'm actually lucky that I found you all here. I have some new weapons that I was going to test elsewhere, but since you're here, I can just use you for target practice!"

"What makes you think we're going to stand here and let you shoot at us?" Knuckles replied.

"It won't matter if you stand or run. Your deaths will be swift."

"Says you," Sonic told him off. "I believe we have you out-skilled and out-manned here."

"Huh? YOU? Thinking you could best ME?!" Eggman sent up a harsh laugh from deep in his chest. "You won't last three minutes against my mech!"

"We'll see about that!"

The tension in the atmosphere was a pulled back sling, tight but ready to come loose. I could here the charging-up of the machine guns, the warming-up of the missile launchers. We had our arsenal ready, too. Sonic had his speed, Knuckles had his brutality, and I had my flight. All our bodies were tensed and coiled up, prepared to charge in with all we had. The sling was pulled back as far as it could be; all it needed was to be let go somehow…


End file.
